Posts Made By: Mike Fleenor

Bright moon no problem! CCD to the rescue.

http://www.mikefleenor.com/comet/macholz_3.htm

Catch it before its gone.

Mike

Hi Paul,

Like you I was budget limited and the goto looked nice on the LX's. I also have a friend with a Losmandy G11. I thought my LX tracked better.

I owned an 10" LX200 for 3 years and used it for imaging extensively. I had the classic 10 as imo the 12" is way too heavy for the mount. They (12") are also more problematic in terms of image shift. The 8's and 10's can be effective as imagers stacking short exposures and if you are satisfied working with stacks of 2-3 minute images then the LX200 is excellent.Mine was and pointed incredibly well. For visual use and running down asteroids and photometric stuff the LX200's are incredible. The problem comes into play when one wants to guide these mounts for long high S/N CCD images. The main problem with them is not PE which can be dealt with quite effectively with the programmable smart drive but random gear errors which do not repeat on a periodic basis. These can swamp the best autoguider out there -I found if I could send it 1 to 2 corrections per second with an autoguider(seperate guide scope and camera) I could get decent results at f/6.3 using 5 to 8 minute exposures. Going longer than this might result in flexure killing ~1/3 of the images. I also soon discovered that most of the time seeing conditions wouldn't allow imaging at long focal lengths and was forced to use telecompressors nearly all the time.

I got tired of this and discovered the joys of small Tak apos and sold the LX200 when finances allowed the purchase of an AP1200. Do I miss it?-nah ...


If I were in the same circumstances again I would probably purchase another one though I could only recommend the LX200 if you were aware of what you are getting into. It can work but you would probably be better off with a good GEM unless you like to tinker half the night instead of image. The G-11 is alot like the LX200 with some TLC they can be great or they can be marginal.

Have you considered a used small Tak mount and a Mak or Schmidt newt? For the bucks you want to spend they would be viable options too.

Mike

My last obs I had 120vac and Cat 5 twisted pair in the same conduit. No interference. 100Mbps without a hitch. The twisted pair cancels out any electrical noise that might be present from the ac line.

Mike

During the year I sometimes erect my Kendrick Shelter Dome for long periods and leave my gear setup in my backyard. (Hopefully I'll get to the obs this year and that will no longer be necessary )

I use a 10 x 13 heavy duty tarp for the rainfly and have made up some heavy "guy" wires to keep things in place. Last year a surprise tornadic thunderstorm was unable to move it from its spot and there were confirmed 100mph microbursts in my area!

I would however recommend removing electronics during electrical storm season. To use the shelter dome you will need to be able to stake it or build a frame for the bottom to keep it spread out.

Mike

Congrats Bob! That's a very unique design for an observatory.

Exactly where are you located?

I finally gave in and orderd an HD-10 as well. I should take delivery on 23 April. I am going to be placing mine on short 4' octagonal walls. Any suggestions? Did you use flashing material?

Your view is very nice but I'd cut the trees down

Mike Fleenor
Knoxville, TN

Hi Andrew,

I recently had to make a similar decision on what to make my pier from. I have a 10' homedome that rests on a free standing deck. I elected to go the steel route as I wanted to be able to easily remove the pier when I move. I have an AP1200 GTO with several different ota's. Roland Christen told me that a 10" diameter pipe is more than sufficient for the 1200 mount for imaging applications. My actual pier ( still under construction) will be two sections totalling 6 feet and is made from standard 12" pipe. It's about 12.75" OD and ~.25" wall. This will be bolted to a massive footing that is just above grade. Telescope piers can be approximately described as pendulums and resistance to deflection is proportional to the cube of the diameter. Wider is better but not necessarily what you have to have. Many people have very good results with the LeSeur 8" piers. I was fortunate in that my steel was free so I opted for the large diameter. I will not be filling my pier with sand either since imo this adds unnecessary mass to the "pendulum".

Mike

Congrats!

Looks like a well executed design.

Mike

Both Texas comets are very nice!

Looks like you all imaged the comet about the time I did this past weekend as the ion tail is all but gone.


Here is my final reduction of the past weekend's data

http://www.mikefleenor.com/comet/macholz_1.htm

Mike

I missed the opportunity to shoot M31 this year and was intrigued with the result Russell obtained with the D100. Very well focussed,tracked, assembled and composited. I only thought the balance was off as there were no blue spiral arms and I felt things could be lightened up a tad. I find his data quite excellent and frankly I was surprised with the result I obtained after slight re-balancing of the color.

With Russell's permission it may be found below.

Color balance is something done to an individual's taste with these commercial digicams as there is no way to arrive at an empirical color weighting using standard G2v calibration so my results may not neccessarily be consistent with everyone's expectations.

Using Photoshop CS I selected the arms and reduced the yellow and red sligthly. I then selected the background in an attempt to lighten it slightly with levels and curves. (The data was clipped so I was limited in this operation) Next I selected the blue stars and lowered the saturation in an attempt to minimize the bloating. Then finally used the levels slider to globally adjust the gamma a tad. Your mileage may vary but on my monitor the galaxy is quite pleasing. Nice blue arms and a yellowish core . I also noted how well the camera recorded the hydrogen emission regions in the galaxy.

Russell's image contained alot of good data to work with. Looks like his camera is quite nice with brighter DSO's. Now a large format CCD looks unneccesaary as these commercial cameras are capable of such results.

Mike

Mark,

This is phenomenal!

Mike